The Australian desert is green. Not just green – depending on where you look from above, it could also be a marbled reddy-pink and blue or yellow-brown with flecks of purple. But green is the most striking colour because the desert is not supposed to look like this.

It won’t last. But for now, in late September, the deep outback – a celebrated part of the Australian continent that few people get to see – is blanketed in plant life. There is sandhill wattle, saltbush and lignum, and grasses and desert flowers. The vegetation is thickest along hundreds of twisting rivers and creeks that cut across the landscape.

Water twists and turns through a lush green landscape

These rivers and creeks carry water from a prodigiously wet monsoon season that brought flooding rains to western Queensland. Rainfall nearly 50% above the long-term average caused havoc, killing livestock and cutting outback tracks, some of which remain underwater.…